'A Woman Captured' opens Belmont film fest

Tuesday

Marish works 12 hours a day in a factory and keeps house for a woman who takes her entire paycheck. In return she sleeps on a couch and receives only insults, a little food and cigarettes.

The Hungarian woman is the subject of “A Woman Captured,” the film that opens this year’s Global Cinema Film Festival in Belmont March 8-11. It’s a frightening picture of modern-day slavery, but one in which women anywhere living paycheck-to-paycheck may see themselves.

The film festival, now in its third year, features more than 30 award-winning independent films from more than 30 different countries, as well as talks with the directors, a red carpet event and more. It’s the brainchild of Waltham resident Raouf Jacob, a documentarian who is on a mission to show films that put a spotlight on human rights abuses.

Jacob, who fled civil war in the west African nation of Sierra Leone as a child in 1999, first moved to Newton with his family and later Watertown where he graduated from high school. Since then he’s graduated college, and with his wife and producer Lara M. Moreno started his own film company, Worldwide Cinema FRAMES (WCF), to produce and distribute films.

Filmmaker Bernadett Tuza-Ritter puts herself on slippery slope when she meets Eta in “A Woman Captured.” We are incredulous to learn she has paid Eta in return for allowing her to spend a year and a half in her household filming Marish, so we already know Eta knows she is doing wrong. And we wonder about the ethics behind the making of the film and whether the means justify the end.

We only get a glimpse of the glimpse modern-day slave owner Eta, who in addition to Marish has two others who work in her modest home. But we get a good picture of how Marish is being exploited.

We see Marish waking up before everyone else and bringing Eta tea. She takes the bus to the factory and scrubs down big stainless steel containers and mops the floor. In the house she makes food and cleans and takes orders from Eta and other members of her family

One moment it seems like Marish is like a kindly grandmother, until we hear Eta’s dusky voice.

“I told you to get back to your work! I tell you what to do, and your job is to do it!” And that’s when Eta’s being civil.

Marish is just 53 years old, but she looks like a woman in her 70s. She has lived with Eta for 10 years.

No one eats unless Eta gives them permission. “It’s no like anywhere else,” Eta tells the filmmaker, trying to justify the situation. “Lots of people are controlled by their families, right?”

Marish says she has grown children and a 16-year-old daughter who once lived with Eta, too, but now lives in a children’s home because Eta made her work and wouldn’t allow her to go to school.

We wonder how Marish ended up in this situation, and there are a few clues, including a man she says she lived with for 22 years but only worked for two.

An escape plan is hatched and we are hopeful Marish will have a new, happier life. But it is always a life on the edge.

Marish has a book, “How to Find Real Happiness,” among her things. “Happiness,” Marish says “it’s never near anywhere I am.”

“A Woman Captured” will be screened twice during the festival, March 8 at 8 p.m. and March 10 at 4:10 p.m. For the full schedule of films, visit www.worldwidecinemaframes.com.

LISTEN to the Daily News podcast, including an interview with Global Cinema Film Festival founder Raouf Jacob at http://www.wickedlocal.com/topics/podcasts